P/MT OOC Discussion and Argument Thread

[Kazomal]

Really practical combat PA is PMT imo.

Most def, MT isn't about what could exists now, it's about what does exists now. So with the right funding, you could have a PA system, but it would be expensive, require a lot of power, and be restricted mainly to transport and logistics roles. Fallout-type combat PA is not something we have now, and thus is not MT. PMT is a few years to a few decades off. FT covers a lot, but generally is far, far into the future.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

Wut? I've never heard of a cannon round that could be intercepted.

As to above poster, I'll probably read over that and respond to it when in about an hour, when I have more time.

No one has ever needed to, but rest assured that a large cannon round certainly can be intercepted. It's slower than a missile and follows a ballistic trajectory, after all.

Gustav Schwerer, the German 800mm railway gun, fired a round at over 800m/s, comparable to a rifle round. The Exocet missile, designed for knocking out medium ships with its 165kg warhead, travels at 315m/s. Subsonic, and not much more than a third the velocity.
The Gustav round weighs about ten times as much as the Exocet, and is more than twice the diameter, but smaller factoring in wingspan.
Even Tomahawk cruise missiles travel at subsonic.

[Axis Nova]

What's your point? The Exocet maintains powered flight all the way to the target and thus has a range significantly in excess of the Gustav's round, and also is more accurate. Though the Gustav isn't even a naval gun in the first place, so I don't know why you're bringing it up.

A supersonic missile is actually more difficult to intercept than a gun round on a ballistic trajectory, since it will lose velocity continually over range rather than keeping at a high speed.

If you want to educate yourself more on the gun vs missile debate read this.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

What's your point? The Exocet maintains powered flight all the way to the target and thus has a range significantly in excess of the Gustav's round, and also is more accurate. Though the Gustav isn't even a naval gun in the first place, so I don't know why you're bringing it up.

A supersonic missile is actually more difficult to intercept than a gun round on a ballistic trajectory, since it will lose velocity continually over range rather than keeping at a high speed.

If you want to educate yourself more on the gun vs missile debate read this.

You said an artillery shell for a naval gun was slower than a missile. Few anti-ship missiles are supersonic, all forms of artillery are. That was my point.

The Gustav had been used, on occasion, to target enemy shipping. I merely selected it because it was huge and thus slow. I was actually looking for the German 35 or 36cm gun, but couldn't find it.

[The Corparation]

The Gustav had been used, on occasion, to target enemy shipping. I merely selected it because it was huge and thus slow. I was actually looking for the German 35 or 36cm gun, but couldn't find it.

source?

[Samozaryadnyastan]

The Gustav had been used, on occasion, to target enemy shipping. I merely selected it because it was huge and thus slow. I was actually looking for the German 35 or 36cm gun, but couldn't find it.

source?

Wiki.
It is 1:50am where I live.

[The Corparation]

source?

Wiki.
It is 1:50am where I live.

Read it. Only mention of it sinking any vessel was that while shelling an undersea munitions bunker, it sunk a boat. Hardly "targeting enemy shipping"

[Tannelorn]

Well for PA there has been a practical..depending on your national attitude towards it power source for a long, long long time. Plutonium batteries, they were thought to be a new wonder idea in the fifties..till they discovered how awful plutonium would be. However now, thanks to some new advances in fission, we have something with far more potential.

Nuclear reactors the size of a refridgerator that can power 10 000 homes and are totally safe as they use so little fuel that the boron control sheath ends the problem. They produce no radioactivity, this is within the next 3-5 years. They already have better fission batteries, these could easily power a PA [the battery]. Technically a tank could be powered by one of the reactors for near unlimited range. The PA can take advantage of new, far less radioactive nuclear batteries, and lithium Ion has real potential too. I caught an article on it recently, to me Fission is fascinating, as are nuclear weapons, and not just for their potential for space exploration. So i sort of..keep up on Fission..I am not a big fusion fan....

So feasability in MT question. PA powered by plutonium batteries [highly reinforced] or newer better systems that are still nuclear based/lithium ion, AHSCA powered the same [those are big enough to be powered by a gas engine and get some good range tbh.], as well as well established space colonies thanks to actually using orion, though little "space fleet" as the ships would be too expensive to use as warships. Feasible? I know in PMT it would be, but MT is pushing it. Orion and AHSCA would work i imagine, but the small PA not sure. [In MT my national attitude towards nuclear was, bring it on awesome! as we had used up all our fuel in thirty years of war.]

This is all assuming a radically divergent twentieth century history of course, where we went a different route. Our MBT for instance was on par with a leopard C2, and we used lighter then air vehicles instead of helicopters as an example.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

Wiki.
It is 1:50am where I live.

Read it. Only mention of it sinking any vessel was that while shelling an undersea munitions bunker, it sunk a boat. Hardly "targeting enemy shipping"

I wasn't actually looking for its operational history, I was just looking at its base stats. I just saw "sunk ship" and ergo, targeting shipping.

But the point still stands that pretty much all rifled artillery fires rounds much faster than the majority of anti-ship missile systems, which was Nova's point.
Less than a third of these weapons are even touching the sonic boundary or above it.

[Golomun]

the very engine used on the SR-71.. how would that work exactly? I mean a nuclear j58 engine?

Same way the J58 would, the inner bit being a nuclear powered turbojet, and having an inlet and means to control airlfow like the j58. Simple really. but it would have to be gigantic to carry it. The only time the US flew a reactor, we used a Peacemaker, they're one of the largest combat aircraft ever built.

why would it have to be gigantic? why not just take a j58 and design a shielded reactor small enough to fit inside it while replacing the combustion chamber with a heat exchanger?
I'm sure we could have reactors small enough in the next ten to twenty years to fit inside a j58, so in a PMT world; they would work!
now if you compare the j58 to a f119 you could in theory combine the best of both engines with a nuclear core to create a nuclear powered craft with the same or even better engine performance of the F-22 raptor! imagine the possibilities for both commercial and military applications! transcontinental airliners that never have to be refuelled, military aircraft that need no carrier (although having a movable airfield keeps your enemies guessing, which to me is a must), UAV's such as the predator that can patrol the skies indefinitely! (of course, you have to take into consideration maintenance of the moving parts of the drone/airliner/fighter/whatever)

why, as with the progress of regular jet engines, we could create miniature versions for scout craft exactly as we currently have them for toy-planes!

now about the reactor... again... what would make this work is a nuclear reactor that is contained inside a heavily shielded shell to reduce or neutralise the radioactive effect in the exhaust since the only thing contacting the air MUST be the heat exchanger, which is another word for heat-sink or reverse radiator. now the idea of using the reactor to generate electricity is flawed and ludicrous for the fact that converting heat/radiation into electricity takes an enormous amount of energy that could otherwise have been directed to the heat exchanger. now back to the system i was explaining beforehand, If the reactor is inside a shielded area of the engine or even outside the engine, all that is required are heat-pipes to transfer the energy/heat to the exchanger where it will then heat up the air to generate thrust!

'now why can't we do this now!?' some may ask, why it is simple... the reactors are too big or too heavy to carry at this current point in time, 'BUT!' you say; 'the amount of fuel for a jet is equal or greater in wieght than the refrigerator reactors!' for that you get a half a cookie. what you must consider is that most of that fuel is used, thus most of that weight is lost over time in conventional jet-aircraft. with a reactor, the craft must carry it for the rest of its life in order to be a powered lifting apparatus. yes, placing a reactor between two engines, just like the J87, would work but you would be lugging around a rather large reactor AND with the distance between the exchanger and the reactor increased, you decrease heat transference efficiency. which is significant. quite significant. so, that again brings me around to the idea of sticking a single reactor INSIDE a single engine similar to the j58 in design; the result is you having an engine that can fit in a f-22, can go from a standstill towards Mach 5+ without assisted acceleration, and has unlimited range. In my view, after writing this whole thing and proofreading it, a nuclear Turbo-RAM-JET is the perfect aircraft engine type in existence. Although not feasible in real life modern times, thanks to the cancellation of research into nuclear turbo jets during the 60's and 70's, use of it in PMT RPing has my vote; that and the fact we should see more of this type in existence in order to save British airways billions in fuel costs. (you see what I did there? (^ ^)
talk about an incentive!.. it would cost nothing in fuel to transport 500 people from New York to London at super-AND-sub-sonic speeds at UNLIMITED RANGE. (flying/blended wing FTW!)

so, again, back to my original question but with a twist: In a PMT world, why should it be a gigantic engine when we could build a shielded reactor, minus steam tubing, small enough to fit inside a F-119 or j58 engine core?
(the grey thingy with the word 'Mach')

[The Corparation]

Same way the J58 would, the inner bit being a nuclear powered turbojet, and having an inlet and means to control airlfow like the j58. Simple really. but it would have to be gigantic to carry it. The only time the US flew a reactor, we used a Peacemaker, they're one of the largest combat aircraft ever built.

why would it have to be gigantic? why not just take a j58 and design a shielded reactor small enough to fit inside it while replacing the combustion chamber with a heat exchanger?
I'm sure we could have reactors small enough in the next ten to twenty years to fit inside a j58, so in a PMT world; they would work!
now if you compare the j58 to a f119 you could in theory combine the best of both engines with a nuclear core to create a nuclear powered craft with the same or even better engine performance of the F-22 raptor! imagine the possibilities for both commercial and military applications! transcontinental airliners that never have to be refuelled, military aircraft that need no carrier (although having a movable airfield keeps your enemies guessing, which to me is a must), UAV's such as the predator that can patrol the skies indefinitely! (of course, you have to take into consideration maintenance of the moving parts of the drone/airliner/fighter/whatever)

why, as with the progress of regular jet engines, we could create miniature versions for scout craft exactly as we currently have them for toy-planes!

now about the reactor... again... what would make this work is a nuclear reactor that is contained inside a heavily shielded shell to reduce or neutralise the radioactive effect in the exhaust since the only thing contacting the air MUST be the heat exchanger, which is another word for heat-sink or reverse radiator. now the idea of using the reactor to generate electricity is flawed and ludicrous for the fact that converting heat/radiation into electricity takes an enormous amount of energy that could otherwise have been directed to the heat exchanger. now back to the system i was explaining beforehand, If the reactor is inside a shielded area of the engine or even outside the engine, all that is required are heat-pipes to transfer the energy/heat to the exchanger where it will then heat up the air to generate thrust!

'now why can't we do this now!?' some may ask, why it is simple... the reactors are too big or too heavy to carry at this current point in time, 'BUT!' you say; 'the amount of fuel for a jet is equal or greater in wieght than the refrigerator reactors!' for that you get a half a cookie. what you must consider is that most of that fuel is used, thus most of that weight is lost over time in conventional jet-aircraft. with a reactor, the craft must carry it for the rest of its life in order to be a powered lifting apparatus. yes, placing a reactor between two engines, just like the J87, would work but you would be lugging around a rather large reactor AND with the distance between the exchanger and the reactor increased, you decrease heat transference efficiency. which is significant. quite significant. so, that again brings me around to the idea of sticking a single reactor INSIDE a single engine similar to the j58 in design; the result is you having an engine that can fit in a f-22, can go from a standstill towards Mach 5+ without assisted acceleration, and has unlimited range. In my view, after writing this whole thing and proofreading it, a nuclear Turbo-RAM-JET is the perfect aircraft engine type in existence. Although not feasible in real life modern times, thanks to the cancellation of research into nuclear turbo jets during the 60's and 70's, use of it in PMT RPing has my vote; that and the fact we should see more of this type in existence in order to save British airways billions in fuel costs. (you see what I did there? (^ ^)
talk about an incentive!.. it would cost nothing in fuel to transport 500 people from New York to London at super-AND-sub-sonic speeds at UNLIMITED RANGE. (flying/blended wing FTW!)

so, again, back to my original question but with a twist: In a PMT world, why should it be a gigantic engine when we could build a shielded reactor, minus steam tubing, small enough to fit inside a F-119 or j58 engine core?
(the grey thingy with the word 'Mach')

I'm not sure if you realize this but even "Small" nuclear reactors are large and heavy as shit. Add in shielding and we're talking dozens of tons.

[Axis Nova]

A fusion reactor could possibly be made smaller and lighter, but imo only relatively compared to a nuclear reactor. I think having fusion reactors that would fit in an aircraft are really high PMT, verging on FT almost.

Now, a spacecraft, on the other hand, is another thing entirely; indeed, I have a spaceplane that uses a combined cycle fusion engine. Also, for operating in space, fusion torches rock.

That being said don't try to launch directly using a torch or you will melt your spaceport.

[Golomun]

I'm not sure if you realise this but even "Small" nuclear reactors are large and heavy as shit.

I'm not sure if you realise this but most of that weight in a single reactor is due to the heavy elements involved in the reactor and also due to the shielding built into the reactor design.
and we are talking about a future version of the refrigerator sized reactors, NOT the modern "Small" reactors that are based on the flawed principle of heating steam since were not heating steam in a j58, but air!!!
(MT reactor principle: take a liquid fluoride thorium reactor and attach it via heat-pipes to sterling engines with each mounted to a AC\DC generator; since it is insane to convert the heat into steam THEN into mechanical energy when you can cut the middle man that takes a third of the energy profit, for gods sake use it in your nation just so I can nod at your brilliant mind)

Add in shielding and we're talking dozens of tons.

then you had to go and do that.. "Small" reactors are designed for towns and are shielded no matter what! to say 'add in shielding' in regards to "small" reactors is like saying 'add in the plutonium' to a nuclear technician when it comes to ALL fission reactors.
Its flawed thinking, sorry if I am being cruel, but why would you say that when the reactor design dictates the type of shielding and what materials to use?

look I apologise, but if I am to build this thing, I'll build it right using Graded-Z Shielding methods that utilises multiple layers of any thin material with a high gamma resistance and can be just as effective as lead yet weigh a whole lot less less.

"Small" nuclear reactors are large and heavy as shit.

this is why I also linked this article of last year that poses the possibility of having refrigerator sized fission reactors in 3 to 5 years. 10 to 20 years, (and only if we do not get side tracked or suffer political bullshit which I find will happen no matter what), we could design and build a simple reactor the size of a microwave oven; which would fit inside a j58 engine core to heat a heat exchanger and thus the air. I mean the US has done it on a much larger scale with a 43in by 50-somethin' reactor back in the 60's but forgot the gamma shielding (idiots).

Yes of course the reactor would be heavy as shit, but not even a quarter or even a sixth as heavy as the one proposed in the article. let me present a tidbit for you, the fuel in a SR-71 is in the range of 84,500lbs, out of that: how much do you think would be left over if each engine core of the j58's were nuclear? (Note the 84,500lbs you have to play with is exactly the difference in weight between a loaded and unloaded SR-71)

A fusion reactor could possibly be made smaller and lighter, but imo only relatively compared to a nuclear reactor. I think having fusion reactors that would fit in an aircraft are really high PMT, verging on FT almost.

Now, a spacecraft, on the other hand, is another thing entirely; indeed, I have a spaceplane that uses a combined cycle fusion engine. Also, for operating in space, fusion torches rock.

That being said don't try to launch directly using a torch or you will melt your spaceport.

Ahh, but there is the thing with the thing! the whole point behind this my fine chum, is to replace the combustion chamber of a j58 with a fission nuclear reactor and heat exchanger to do the exact same thing: heat the incoming air in order to expand it and thus create thrust! no combustion chamber = no need for fuel pumps that weigh 100lbs each, nor fuel tanks that take up the length of the wing and weigh a tonne (1,000lbs) nor fuel! (roughly between 20,000lbs to 84,500lbs of fuel on the SR-71)

no fuel = no limited range, no pollution (if you design the reactor right) and less weight!

SO! less weigh equals more lifting capacity, more capacity equals more toys on airplane! THUS! in order to work, we need to work on miniaturisation of fission reactors in order to create a reactor meant for flying inside a j58 type or the new f-119.

If you want to power a A380 or 747 for military logistics, use the same principle, and viola! a nuclear powered troop transport with unlimited range! (except this time around you DO have a gigantic turbojet to play with and you DO have the technology today to create and fly a working prototype in 5 years or less if you have the know how and funding and plutonium!)

a last note: project pluto was done in 1957 until 1964 with two prototype engines the size and scope of a 747 engine. why the hell should I pay for fuel and fuel equipment 52+ years later? I want my time back.
That or a nuclear f-119 installed in a CF-105 arrow..

"The reactor had outer diameter of 57.25 in and length 64.24 in; the dimension of the reactor core was 47.24 in diameter and 50.70 in length. The critical mass of uranium was 59.90 kg, and the reactor's power density averaged at 10 megawatts/cubic foot, with total power of 600 megawatts.

The nuclear fuel elements were made of refractory ceramic based on beryllium oxide, with enriched uranium dioxide as fuel and small amount of zirconium dioxide for structural stability. The fuel elements were hollow hexagonal tubes about 4 in long with 0.3 in distance between the outer parallel planes, with inside diameter of 0.227 in. They were manufactured by high-pressure extruding of the green compact, then sintering almost to its theoretical density. The core consisted of 465000 individual elements stacked to form 27000 airflow channels; the design with small unattached elements reduced problems related with thermal stresses. The elements were designed for average operation temperature of 2330 °F (1277 °C); the autoignition point of the reactor base plates was only 150 °C higher. The neutron flux was calculated to be 9×1017 neutrons/cm2.s in the aft and 7×1014 neutrons/cm2.s in the nose. The gamma radiation level was fairly high due to the lack of shielding; radiation hardening for the guidance electronics had to be designed.

The reactors were successfully tested at Jackass Flats of the Nevada Test Site. The Tory II-A reactor, the scaled-down variant, was tested in mid-1961 and successfully ran for several seconds on May 14, 1961. A full-scale variant, the Tory II-C, was run for nearly five minutes at full power. The latter test, limited by the air storage facility capacity, ran for 292 seconds. The air fed to the reactor was preheated to 943 °F and compressed to 316 psi, to simulate ramjet flight conditions.[1]"
- Quoted Wikipedia

[Kaukolastan]

-GIANT TECHNOBABBLE SNIP-

I'm not going to engage you on the science of this. Put it at the far end of PMT, call out to overcoming "several near-fatal flaws in the enhanced Z-grade shielding designs" and toss a few references to the mechanics of LFTR operations, and I'd accept that it was doable. However, in a planetary environment, "could" and "should" are different things.

Even assuming that every flaw is overcome, every technical detail worked out, and somehow, "small" reactors went from being the size of a walk-in freezer to a large microwave (hey, it's PMT, sure!)... you put a nuclear reactor in your aircraft, and then fly it over someone else's country? Ho Lee Shit is not just a tragically named Chinese man. That is going to start an incident. This is after, by the way, whatever Greenpeace-type organizations get done hatching ungodly eggs about the fact that you're building reactors the size of microwaves and then flying them around. These guys hate moving waste on a train. You say, "we're putting a salt reactor in an aircraft" and they're going to hear "Ahaha! Take that, Captain Planet!" and react accordingly.

And you know what? They might have a point on this one. First time an aircraft crashes near a populated area, and the guys in moon suits show up? News Center Five is going to lead the charge into potassium-iodide-gulping panic, and your flying nukes are going to send multiple aspects of nuclear power (maybe LFTRs in general, maybe fusion research, who knows?) crashing back into a post-Chernobyl "nobody move" dark age. Plus, the company that built the reactor gets their pants sued off by the family of some asshole who chugged a bottle of iodine and croaked, which then gets class-action'd by all the rest of the panic-crowd. Politicians start grandstanding about the "threat to the X people" and making hay... good times.

Anywho, back to you flying a reactor over someone else's country. In peace times, that might get a reaction like the in-country one described about, except with an extra dose of xenophobia and stung national pride. In wartime, you might just be giving them the political justification to slap that big red button. God help you if they have some sort of Dead Hand operation with a radiation detector and automated "DO EET!" systems that can't tell your crashed plane from THE END.

Sure, that's just people being stupid. Technology marches on, and all of this is just the reaction of dumb people to a theoretically safe technology (after all, it's the future!). Here's the problem.

People are stupid. They're also who you're dealing with, and until something in the zeitgeist changes, the phrase "nuclear powered aircraft" isn't even worth the research money to spell check it.

---

EDIT FOR CLARITY: It came to my attention, while eating lunch, that my post might have focused on snark to the exclusion of several counter arguments. Allow me to address them:

1. I'm a repressive regime, and I don't care what my people think/MY PEOPLE ALWAYS SUPPORT THE STATE!
Generally, these kinds of breakthroughs do not occur in third-world hell holes. A thriving science community requires discourse and an infrastructure that is sorely lacking in most countries that meet the "YOU WILL OBEY SOPOT" style of government. You could be an exception, like the USSR, who manages to combine science a secret police, but you still have to justify this technology to the rest of the world, who might just ban your aircraft from every flying into/near their airspace. That puts a hurtin' on the ole' economy, and causes rational governments (which includes the rational-oppressive ones) to reconsider the effects of their spiffy technology on their relative power.

2. It's the future!
You would think this argument would carry more weight than it does. Sadly, this is a multiplayer game. If you were writing a story about your nation, then you could have your nuclear planes without trouble. It would be cool. Your people would be fine with it, maybe excepting fringe "greens" who cling to an old world long gone. Cool. However, you are playing PMT (and a lot of PMT players like to mingle with MT players), and that means you'd be playing with a very diverse group, many of whom would would have objections to flying nuclear reactors over their country. Protest all you want, you're not going to win over all of them, in or out of character.

Here's where that argument really breaks down. Even if every player agrees to play "2150-Tech" or whatever the kids are calling it these days, the players are still thinking with 20XX mindsets. Which means that even though you believe people will be unfazed by flying nuclear engines around cities by 2150, the players you're working with will see the word "nuclear" through the eyes of the early twenty-first century, carrying with them all the OOC bias and baggage of their worldview. You're not just writing science fiction here, you're playing a writing game, and every post is an argument that your nation has a right to exist and behave as you will it. I don't think that nuclear aircraft are a good argument to make.

Heck, I run into this myself. My nation is mid/late PMT (railguns and mitochondria-doping and shit), but when I play with others, I have to scale it all back, use companies or solitary characters, and make the ubertech fade into the backdrop. "Vertols" become "like fancy helicopters" and SSTO mass drivers become "launch facilities". Why? To make it easier to play with me when the other nation is running a 1990s-era country. If I'm writing internally, I crank the tech. When I'm playing with friends, I crank the tech. When I'm out in public? I drop a translucent veil over the late-PMT-stuff, and "background" it so that I don't force the other player into accepting a more sci-fi world than they wanted. If they want in... well, here comes the AI.

Unfortunately, nuclear reactors in the aircraft can't be ignored like what I brought up. You can't pretend that a reactor is just set-dressing, or that it doesn't happen. That nation either lets you fly a nuclear power plant into their airspace, or they do not. Every time you roleplay with them, you will force them to decide, "Do I let people fly nukes over me?" A large number of them will say "no". It's not worth the fight, IMHO.

Again, unless there is a change in the zeitgeist.

And I mean OOC, as well.

[The Corparation]

In response to the above posters fears of crashing nuclear powered aircraft, I would like to put forth all of the incidents where the USAF fucked it up and crashed aircraft with full payloads of nuclear weapons without too serious an incident. Several of these incidents were over foreign soil and didn't cause anywhere near the extreme incident you put forth. Since a reactor the size of what Golomun proposed wouldn't contain that much more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs, I'm doubtful that the nuclear materials involved in a small reactor would create an insurmountable problem in the event of a crash.

[Axis Nova]

Don't compare a nuclear weapon to an operating nuclear reactor. The two are in no way similar other than both using fissionables.

[The Corparation]

Don't compare a nuclear weapon to an operating nuclear reactor. The two are in no way similar other than both using fissionables.

I'm not, I'm saying that they both have high amounts of radioactive materials and since the small reactor will be smaller then a bomb, it will have less, and since smashing one on the ground hasn't been a big issue, slapping the other on the ground probably won't either. Fumbling with Nuclear weapons is also more likely to cause panic and alarm then smashing a small microwave size reactor.

[Kaukolastan]

In response to the above posters fears of crashing nuclear powered aircraft, I would like to put forth all of the incidents where the USAF fucked it up and crashed aircraft with full payloads of nuclear weapons without too serious an incident. Several of these incidents were over foreign soil and didn't cause anywhere near the extreme incident you put forth. Since a reactor the size of what Golomun proposed wouldn't contain that much more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs, I'm doubtful that the nuclear materials involved in a small reactor would create an insurmountable problem in the event of a crash.

Since a reactor the size of what Golomun proposed wouldn't contain that much more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs

more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs

more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs

... I'm just gonna let that one sit. Imagine how that would play on the news.

---

Additionally, nuclear weapons are designed NOT to blow up. They're solid weapons that are specifically designed to only do anything reactive if a precise series of events are carried out. A reactor would be, by its nature, RUNNING during flight, which means more chance for "bad things" (but not a nuclear ka-splosion - THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN). Even then, you are correct. The amount of actual damage done by a sudden dispersion of radioactive materials over a metro center (you know, near airports) would be very minor, speaking in terms of raw population and infrastructure loss. However (and this is a big "however"), people do not operate on sheer numbers and cold logic. Just think how this will play out. Three Mile Island was a minor nuclear accident. Fukushima was an "Accident with Local Consequences" (4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale) until international pressure caused Japan to re-evaluated it to a "Major Accident", and no single reactor ever crossed over a 5. Three Mile stagnated American nuclear process. Fukushima sent the nuclear industry in Japan into a tailspin.

Oh, and as for "incidents where the USAF fucked it up" you mentioned? Let's look at the most recent. In 2007, the US accidentally flew (flew, not crashed) six AGM-129 ACM nuclear cruise missiles were loaded onto a B-52 and transported from Minot to Barksdale. The "without too serious an incident" you mentioned? Let's look at the list of the People Who Done Got Smacked:

• Fifth Maintenance Group Commander - fired
• Fifth Bomb Wing Commander - fired
• Second Operations Group Commander - fired
• Four Unnamed Senior NCOs in Fifth Bomb Wing - fired
• ENTIRE FIFTH BOMB WING - stripped of certification to handle nuclear materials, special weapons, and carry out missions
• Chief of Staff of the Air Force - fired
• Secretary of the Air Force - fired

For those of you not from the USA, that list caps with the top officer of the entire Air Force and the civilian leadership of the Air Force (who only answers to the Secretary of Defense and the President). I'd call that list pretty damn serious.


Now, let's look at how many civilian nuclear incidents there have been in the past twenty years: Wikipedia says 9.

Compare this to aircraft crashes. There were 130 in 2010. There were 211 in 1999. Let's be generous, and go with the lower number. 130 crashed per year.

If you're putting nuclear engines in planes, each of those crashes will have one to four engines on it. Let's be nice and assume one reactor per plane.

That's 130 nuclear accidents a year.

Oh, yeah, that will go over well.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

In response to the above posters fears of crashing nuclear powered aircraft, I would like to put forth all of the incidents where the USAF fucked it up and crashed aircraft with full payloads of nuclear weapons without too serious an incident. Several of these incidents were over foreign soil and didn't cause anywhere near the extreme incident you put forth. Since a reactor the size of what Golomun proposed wouldn't contain that much more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs, I'm doubtful that the nuclear materials involved in a small reactor would create an insurmountable problem in the event of a crash.

Since a reactor the size of what Golomun proposed wouldn't contain that much more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs

more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs

more nuclear materials then a few high power nuclear bombs

... I'm just gonna let that one sit. Imagine how that would play on the news.

---

Additionally, nuclear weapons are designed NOT to blow up. They're solid weapons that are specifically designed to only do anything reactive if a precise series of events are carried out. A reactor would be, by its nature, RUNNING during flight, which means more chance for "bad things" (but not a ka-splosion - THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN, see Axis Nova's post). Even then, you are correct. The amount of actual damage done by a sudden dispersion of radioactive materials over a metro center (you know, near airports) would be very minor, speaking in terms of raw population and infrastructure loss. However (and this is a big "however"), people do not operate on sheer numbers and cold logic. Just think how this will play out. Three Mile Island was a minor nuclear accident. Fukushima was an "Accident with Local Consequences" (4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale) until international pressure caused Japan to re-evaluated it to a "Major Accident", and no single reactor ever crossed over a 5. Three Mile stagnated American nuclear process. Fukushima sent the nuclear industry in Japan into a tailspin.

Oh, and as for "incidents where the USAF fucked it up" you mentioned? Let's look at the most recent. In 2007, the US accidentally flew (flew, not crashed) six AGM-129 ACM nuclear cruise missiles were loaded onto a B-52 and transported from Minot to Barksdale. The "without too serious an incident" you mentioned? Let's look at the list of the People Who Done Got Smacked:

• Fifth Maintenance Group Commander - fired
• Fifth Bomb Wing Commander - fired
• Second Operations Group Commander - fired
• Four Unnamed Senior NCOs in Fifth Bomb Wing - fired
• ENTIRE FIFTH BOMB WING - stripped of certification to handle nuclear materials, special weapons, and carry out missions
• Chief of Staff of the Air Force - fired
• Secretary of the Air Force - fired

For those of you not from the USA, that list caps with the top officer of the entire Air Force and the civilian leadership of the Air Force (who only answers to the Secretary of Defense and the President). I'd call that list pretty damn serious.


Now, let's look at how many civilian nuclear incidents there have been in the past twenty years: Wikipedia says 9.

Compare this to aircraft crashes. There were 130 in 2010. There were 211 in 1999. Let's be generous, and go with the lower number. 130 crashed per year.

If you're putting nuclear engines in planes, each of those crashes will have one to four engines on it. Let's be nice and assume one reactor per plane.

That's 130 nuclear accidents a year.

Oh, yeah, that will go over well.

That's because the news puts a skew against anything that is mildly dangerous because they like getting people riled.
Nuclear warheads are stable as fuck. You can detonate conventional explosives next to them, they're still not going to go off. Miniature nuclear reactors aren't going to be dangerous in terms of detonating even where it possible - it'd be a minor radiation risk. The amount of radioactive material per engine is going to be laughably small to fit inside a J58 nose cone.

[Licana]

That's because the news puts a skew against anything that is mildly dangerous because they like getting people riled.

This is kind of the point he was making. :/

Nuclear warheads are stable as fuck. You can detonate conventional explosives next to them, they're still not going to go off.

This is pretty much stated by K-Stan in the above post, but I suppose it could do with some repetition.

Miniature nuclear reactors aren't going to be dangerous in terms of detonating even where it possible - it'd be a minor radiation risk. The amount of radioactive material per engine is going to be laughably small to fit inside a J58 nose cone.

It is still LOLradiation, and LOLradiation is bad. This is why we should ban cell phones and microwaves and whatever, because LOLradiation is the cause of all sorts of problems.

That sounds ridiculous, but if you lose one of those aircraft over another nation, that is still a nuclear event, and I don't think you'll be spreading sunshine and friendship when your nuclear powered lolbombers are raining "minor" amounts radiation down on another nation.

[Kaukolastan]

That's because the news puts a skew against anything that is mildly dangerous because they like getting people riled.

Quite right. If you'd read my earlier post, you would have seen that this is kind of key to the argument. Nuclear engines will not happen in the near future EVEN IF TECHNICAL CHALLENGES ARE SOLVED, because the regulators won't have it, the news won't tolerate it, the politicians wouldn't back it, and the people wouldn't allow it. There's too much taboo on the table, especially the first time something goes wrong. It would require a shift of the nuclear-energy paradigm, back to a 1950s-esque "yay atomics" viewpoint.

Nuclear warheads are stable as fuck. You can detonate conventional explosives next to them, they're still not going to go off. Miniature nuclear reactors aren't going to be dangerous in terms of detonating even where it possible - it'd be a minor radiation risk. The amount of radioactive material per engine is going to be laughably small to fit inside a J58 nose cone.

Point to where I ever said that the reactor would "go off". Reactors do not turn into nuclear bombs. This was never in the discussion. A radiological event is all I'm talking about. My only talk about nuclear weapons was to dismiss his comment about "nuclear bombs are safe when they crash". No, they do not blow up on accident. The ocean is also full of water. Neither is relevant to this discussion.

NINJA EDIT: Thank you, Licana, for bringing sanity.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

I mistook the [hr] line you used to separate parts of your post for the dividing line of your sig.
Thusly missing out the other half of your post seems to massively change your stance, and I apologise.

I'm just bitterly cynical at the stigma nuclear power has these days. A reactor engine would have well under a kilogram of nuclear fuel in it. A DU anti-tank round probably has more radioactive material in it by mass, and the US Army and Air Force's not been shy about throwing those around the battlefield by the thousand since the mid-to-late seventies.

[Kaukolastan]

I mistook the [hr] line you used to separate parts of your post for the dividing line of your sig.
Thusly missing out the other half of your post seems to massively change your stance, and I apologise.

I'm just bitterly cynical at the stigma nuclear power has these days. A reactor engine would have well under a kilogram of nuclear fuel in it. A DU anti-tank round probably has more radioactive material in it by mass, and the US Army and Air Force's not been shy about throwing those around the battlefield by the thousand since the mid-to-late seventies.

It's cool.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone more pro-nuclear than myself, unless you wanted to crack open Edward Teller's grave. However, while I'd be hopeful about the idea of nuclear engines from a "wow, cool" standpoint, I highly doubt we'll see them employed in our lifetimes (in atmosphere, anywho).

[Samozaryadnyastan]

I'm doing a degree in the thing, I CHALLENGE YOU

But, I clearly digress.

[Kaukolastan]

I'm doing a degree in the thing, I CHALLENGE YOU

But, I clearly digress.

Damn, you might have me there.

While I am not pursuing a degree in nuclear engineering or physics, I am a sci-fi writer at heart (masquerading as a normal employed citizen) who hangs around with multiple physics/engineering nerds professionals. I may lack on hard math now and again, but I counter with spunk and argumentativeness, and the ability to speak/write in "normal person English", so as to make "new-kew-lar powar" seem less scary to the hordes of NIMBY-people. (Probably living next to a coal plant, mind you.)

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, FOR MY WEAPONS I CHOOSE: WORDS!